Marcopolis presents the Jordan Report focused on the investments, doing business, economy and other topics featuring interviews with key executives and government officials. The sectors under review are industry, telecom, banking sector, ICT, investments and more.

Ayla: A Unique Mixed Use Real Estate Project on the Red Sea

"Ayla is very unique; it is basically realising the vision of Aqaba in a way. The vision of Aqaba was to have 50% of its activities in tourism and in other related developments. So Ayla was given land on the border which was undeveloped to turn into a mixed use development and attraction," says Sahl Dudin, Managing Director of Ayla Oasis Development Company, which is currently undertaking the leading real estate development on the Red Sea.

"Slowly but steadily we ploughed on and we were able to increase Aqaba’s shoreline by 17km which is almost 52% of the existing shoreline and so it is quite a feat. We did that by building a series of lakes and lagoons with a total area of around 75 hectares and around these lagoons we shall be building a series of hotels with around 1,500 hotel rooms and around 3,000 residential properties, some of which will be waterfront, others are facing the city or Jordan’s first 18 hole, signature golf course designed by Greg Norman who actually labelled our golf course as one of the top 3 golf courses in the world when it comes to sustainability—if not the first."